Blog

European Union lawmakers have passed the landmark Digital Services Act (DSA) that will require big tech firms to be more active in their policing of illegal content, ban advertising targetted at children, and prohibit the ‘dark patterns’ that companies use to mislead users into parting with their information.

According to a Reuters report, the DSA comes with a fine of up to six percent of the company’s annual global turnover for a breach of the law. This law was passed after the similarly created Digital Markets Act (DMA), which comes with a 10 percent fine, as well as the recently-passed Markets in Crypto-Assets (MiCA) framework covering crypto transactions.

However, according to experts, the EU will have trouble enforcing the new law. In a statement seen by Reuters, deputy director Ursula Pachl of the European Consumer Organisation (BEUC) said, “We raised the alarm last week with other civil society groups that if the Commission does not hire the experts it needs to monitor Big Tech’s practices in the market, the legislation could be hamstrung by ineffective enforcement.”

In response to worries, EU industry chief Thierry Breton wrote in a blog post, “We have started to gear the internal organisation to this new role, including by shifting existing resources, and we also expect to ramp up recruitment next year and in 2024 to staff the dedicated DG CONNECT [Directorate-General for Communications Networks, Content and Technology] team with over 100 full time staff.”